Among the Brave

Chapter Seven

Lee didn’t show up. Days passed, and Trey waited patiently, but he heard no doorbell, no knock at the door, no cheerful voice calling out, “Heyl Where is everyone?”

Dimly, Trey knew he should be grateful that nobody else showed up either — no more men in uniform, no family newly authorized to steal the Talbots’ house. But it was so hard to wait, always wondering what had happened to his friends, to Mr. and Mrs. Talbot, to the entire country.

The head of the Population Police is in charge of the Government now, he reminded himself. What do you think’s happening? Peace and joy and happiness?

Most of the time, Trey felt the same near-panic he’d experienced barely a year earlier, waiting for his mother to return from his father’s funeral. He’d been too griefstricken and bewildered then even to read, and he kept trying to imagine his life without Dad.

Will Mom take over teaching me Latin and French and Greek? he’d wondered. Will she talk to me in the evenings instead of glaring resentfully while I study? In between his bouts of anguish, Trey had felt almost hopeful, imagining Mom finally taking care of him — loving him — like mothers did in books.

It’d been beyond his imagination to think that she would get rid of him.

Now, wandering aimlessly through the Talbots’ huge house, Trey kept wondering about Lee.

Has he forgotten his friends? Has he forgotten how badly he wants to make third children free? Or is he too scared of the new Government to show his face in public again?

It was this last question that worried Trey the most If even Lee was scared, then Trey should be terrified, petrified, frightened out of his wits.

Sometimes he was.

On the third day, the electricity in the Talbots’ house went off. It happened at dusk, just as the lights that Trey had left on — one in the TV room, one in the basement— had begun to seem cozy and threatening all at once. In a split second Trey lost the lights, the refrigerator’s hum, the heating system’s purr.

Cautiously, he stepped over to a window and peeked out. The whole neighborhood had gone dark — every huge house on the Talbots’ street had been plunged into blackness.

Every single one of them looked dead.

Trey moved to the back of the house, to a window in the TV room. Only one small house stood behind the Talbots~ It was dark too, but as Trey watched, he saw dim, flickering lights — candles? — spring to life inside, throwing shadows around tiny rooms.

A woman stood at the back door of the small house, and a boy came up beside her. He said something to her, and she nodded. Then the boy scampered out the door, across the yard, and into another building — a barn? — off to the side.

Trey blinked. Maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him. Maybe the uncertain light had fooled him.

Or maybe the boy was someone Trey knew. Not Lee— Trey would have instantly run out of the house, screaming with joy, if he’d thought it was Lee. No, he thought the boy he’d seen was Smits Grant, the boy Lee had taken to safety.

And wherever Smits was, Lee had to be too.

Didn’t he?